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Syracuse Chiefs open their International League season with a loss, but with smiles in the seats

2014 Syracuse Chiefs Opening Day

It was Opening Day on Thursday at NBT Bank Stadium where Army Major Nichelle Ruffin sang the national anthem (that was clocked at 2:47.1) as players from the Syracuse Chiefs and Scranton-Wilkes/Barre Railriders lined the base paths. Except for the final score in the game that was eventually lost by the Chiefs 4-1, most of the folks in the crowd of 6,661 seemed to have a good time. Mike Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com

Opening day of the Syracuse Chiefs with general manager Jason SmorolNew Syracuse Chiefs general manager Jason Smorol races around tending to last-minute details in the hours leading up to the team's opening day Thursday at NBT Bank Stadium. Smorol introduces George Lonergan who threw out the first pitch. He was in a snowmobile accident last year that cost him both his legs.

Syracuse, N.Y. — The great good news of the afternoon was delivered by Joanie Mahoney, a late arrival to Thursday's baseball doings on the north side, who stood on the infield beneath a friendly sun and provided a pretty nice excuse for her tardiness.

Traffic, the county executive advised those in the seats at NBT Bank Stadium. She'd gotten stuck in a line of cars, all headed for the ball park, out there on Hiawatha Boulevard and she was sorry.

Except . . . she wasn't. Joanie was, in fact, delighted. And so was everybody else.

It was Opening Day in Syracuse. The hometown Chiefs, who'd become so much moldy bread in these parts, were about to begin their 100th International League season. And folks who had only recently stopped shivering came out to the yard that had only recently been cleared of snow and ice by, among others, prisoners imported from local cells.

And they'd done so, those fans, in the fashion that had inspired hope that maybe, just maybe, baseball, at least the Triple-A version here in Central New York, could be awakened from its long slumber.

The official crowd count, a seemingly legitimate one, came in at 6,661. And while those weren't Stephen Strasburg numbers — in fact, they weren't even half of the 14,098 that Strasburg drew back in 2010 — they were big enough.

And, predictably, Jason Smorol beamed. And it hadn't mattered all that much that his club, the one he's served since succeeding John Simone as its general manager in October, had struck out nine times, run into three outs on the bases and committed a couple of errors along the way to losing, and meekly, to the Scranton-Wilkes/Barre RailRiders 4-1.

"It was awesome," declared Smorol after his day that had begun at 5 a.m. was winding down. "I think we were somewhere between 85 percent-95 percent with people being happy. A couple of guys said the hot dog lines were too long. A couple of guys said the ticket lines were too slow. And I told them, 'You're right. That's a solid gripe. We're gonna work on it.' And we will."

And then the GM — the one who'd grabbed a microphone during the pre-game, on-field ceremonies and became a combination of circus ringmaster, carnival barker and Jesse Ventura at Wrestlemania as he introduced Mahoney and other luminaries — exhaled just outside his office.

"This was only one day," he stated. "We have 71 more home games on the schedule."

Smorol was, of course, correct. Thursday — marred a bit by a broken ticket-printing machine that created agitation among some who'd bellied up to the window; tarnished a bit by a jammed parking lot that forced a scramble for more spaces for all those vehicles — made for a terrific bow by an organization desperate to make a good first impression.

But then, Opening Day does have its own oomph. And Thursday, though chillier than any game of baseball deserves (this, once that friendly sun slipped behind the ubiquitous gray mass), was not nearly as ghastly as other early-April afternoons have been in our burg. So the Chiefs were working with pretty much of a full deck.

And yet there was an unmistakable energy inside the joint. And there were a lot of laughs in foul territory and up in the stands as Reggy the Purple Party Dude did his goofy thing. And there was a festive atmosphere on the jammed concourse where chatty patrons took full advantage of the one-dollar hot dogs, one-dollar beers and one-dollar sodas.

Yeah, it was cold. But this was no cold trudge by 6,661 of our citizens who were wishing they were someplace else. This was, basically, a peek at what might be.

"I very rarely get speechless," confessed Bill Dutch, the Chiefs' president and chief executive officer, "but I'm speechless right now. I could not have anticipated that this day would have gone any better. It was all about baseball, all about entertainment, all about Syracuse. I just hope the word spreads and the buzz gets out that this is the place to be in the spring and summer of 2014. We're just starting. We have a lot to prove. But I couldn't be prouder."

And Joanie Mahoney couldn't have been more delighted to have arrived late.